Nov 23 Columban b. 559 d. 615

John and Thommy
Good morning
I love you
[1149 pm thanksgiving eve….]

St. Columban


An Irish saint, who became a FBI for his service to God, kings, and the people whom he touched. It was the essence of his culture, his collective unconscious, his Irishness, and his faith by which he was identified, to which he returned over and over in his daily discipline and throughout his many challenges – for doing right and good, for God, church, community, and self..

Columban was born about 559, about sixty years plus after St Patrick died. He comes from a good family who ensured that he had a classical education. I would say as I look upon the Nolan-Gavin couple, that I come from a good family who did their best to see that I got the best Catholic education available – St Patrick’s in Albany, Sacred Heart (Sisters of Mercy) then Cheverus (Jesuits) in Portland, and Molloy (Marist brothers) in NYC. Unfortunately, you were not born to a good family – your parents were not joined in marriage nor did your parents embrace pater materque; nor did you receive the education that was available to you by your parentage – neither did you get classical nor Catholic [beyond eighth grade you did not have Catholic in school; from 1994 on you only got Catholic education in the classroom and in half of your homes. I am sorry.

Columban resolved early to live an ascetic life. In junior high, I conferred with our curate at St Patrick’s about junior seminary. He saw my desire as more running away instead of seeking service as a clergy. Maybe he was right. Running away from the fighting at home; running away from my fat self, too? Maybe. But I sustained my discernment, imbued with the Ignatian spirituality and not only persuaded myself but the priests of the Society that I did have a vocation. By the middle of my junior year, I was headed for the novitiate. It was an easy excuse, never once concurred in by my Jesuit advisors, to avoid girls and dating – being fat and debilitatingly shy. Columban was distracted by the vivaciousness of the Irish lasses. He immersed himself into his studies - but do you think that grammar, rhetoric, geometry would conquer the offerings available to him in the Irish maidens? Columban consulted an old woman recluse who “warned him that if he wished to maintain his purpose of self-conquest he must fly to a region where girls are less beautiful and seductive than Ireland. "Save thyself, young man, and fly!" “ (Catholic online) It was not girls or the vow of chastity that dissuaded me from following a vocation in the Jesuits. I have said all along it was my inability to adhere to the vow of obedience, an essential vow for a religious, more important for a Jesuit. Maybe, however, it was a more fundamental flaw in myself – an unwillingness to persist beyond first impressions, to be less than perfect in the eyes of those around me. After a little while, about a year and a half at Shadowbrook, I had certainly revealed some of my faults and flaws and had committed my share of indiscretions and antisocial offenses not to mention the failures of spirituality….

Over his mother’s protestations, Columban went to Lough Erne then on to Bangor in Northern Ireland. My mother did not object to my wanting to be a priest. No one in my entire family objected. I don’t remember any resounding support, either. If that’s what you want, then you should do it, was the closest to what I remember as encouragement. So always on my own….

So why didn’t Columban stay in Bangor under Congall? Columban tells us about his calling – hearing the voice that called Abraham to ‘go out of you own country, and from your father’s house, into a land that I will show you.’ The Irish monk was inherently a missionary. With the gift of gab, he was also a passionate preacher. And Columban heard the calling so incessantly that his abbot was not able to dissuade him.

In about 589, Columban and twelve other monks went to Gaul. Now get this picture. An Irish monk, passionate in faith, ascetic in self discipline, a tornado of righteousness. He encounters the Catholicism of sixth century Gaul – war ravaged and lacking in virtue, ecclesiastical discipline, and a hierarchy who neglected orthodoxy and their responsibilities. Columban and his mobile community lived and preached humility and charity. They also had a unique way of keeping one another on the straight and narrow without a harsh word among themselves. If one of them lapsed at all, his confreres would beat the crap out of him.

King Gontram of Burgandy was delighted by Columban and his community. He gave them an ancient Roman castle where they lived in stark austerity – eating the bark of trees, wild herbs, and whatever gifts the people around would give them. Like St Francis later, Columban was able to commune with the beasts and critters of the forest, who would do whatever he told them. He even persuaded a bear to give up his cave to Columban, who used it as his cell.

King Gontram provided Columban with the larger castle of Luxeuil when his community grew. In the midst of the castle’s Roman baths, the monks established their ascetic community. Columban and his monks attracted several hundreds of disciples who built three monasteries under his governance. The nobles brought their sons to him, they lavishly supported their work, and many joined him in their ecclesiastical and charitable works. The community so large and the faith so strong and their prayer so essential to their lives, Columban organized the Laus Perennis – a perpetual prayer by the monks.

Everyone worked the farms – hard physical work was an ingredient of their spiritual efforts. One rule was for the monks to go to rest so tired that he was ready to fall asleep on the way to bed; and then get up before he had slept off his weariness.
For twenty years Columban established and expanded his monasteries – and his influence and his audacity. He sent epistles to bishops and reminded them of their duties. Writing is an Irish gift – I cry each time I realize how your mother’s obstinacy and lack of skills and her keeping you away from me have prevented your receiving this talent too. Writing as a gadfly is also an Irish legacy. Letters. Letters to the editor. Even a brief period as columnist in the Tennessee Register. Now blogger and letter writer to you. Of course, the Gallo-Frank clergy did not take kindly to the Celtic peculiarities of tonsure, costume, and the observance of Easter, not to mention the public admonitions of this foreigner with the swelling following. No one takes kindly to anyone who writes and publishes a critique of them. And the response is usually ad hominem – like by the Dominican sisters, father Johnston, Bishop Kmiec, John Sieganthaler, not to mention your mother, too.

Not unlike today, even the slightest ecclesiastical peculiarity was treated as a monstrous heresy. In your being put into the anti-Catholic GDS, your peculiarities were your Catholicism, which were systematically punished by every mechanism available to the private school and the forces of peer groups, all reinforced at 2502, the source of your placement. Columban offers us an example of why and how not to succumb to the pressures of homogeneity, especially when the ingredients of the mixture are fiercely anti-Catholic. The Gallic bishops examined his conduct – to get him back in line, to abandon his eccentricities. Columban wrote to the bishops and the Pope, e.g., “perhaps it may not be an excess of presumption if I suggest that many men follow the broad way, and that it is better to encourage those who follow the narrow way that leads to life than to throw stumbling blocks in their path." (Catholic online) Columban persisted on his righteous trail. The bishops were still offended and remained against him but took no further action.

Columban’s greater and more wicked opponent was Brunehild, queen-dowager, grandmother of Theodebert, king of Austrasia, and Thierry, king of Burgundy. Brunhild held the reign of power in her grandson’s kingdoms by diverting their interests into sensual pleasures. The Austrasian nobles persuaded Theodebert to banish her. She was then warmly received by Thierry, whom she kept unmarried and without legitimate heir [although he had four sons]. She had the bishop of Vienne, who encouraged Thierry to marry, killed.

In the midst of this confluence of mishagosh, Thierry had religious instincts. As do you! He took pride in having a holy man of such stature as Columban in his kingdom. He visited the monk often – and Columban unhesitatingly admonished the king to marry, to get his house, his life, his kingdom in order. Columban thus earned the perpetual enmity of Brunehild. She tried to isolate him and his followers in their monasteries and forbade others from giving them gifts. Columban appealed to Thierry who removed the bans. Columban also continued to appeal to Theodoric to straighten out his life, threatening to keep him from communion. This infuriated Thierry and Brunehild, for obvious reasons; it also incensed the bishops who were angry at this use of the sacrament. This started a sequence of detentions and threats to Columban’s rule at the monasteries.

In 610, banished Columban and the Irish monks who had accompanied him back to Ireland. Put on a ship at Nantes, the vessel was left stranded on the banks at the mouth of the river. The sailors refused to go to sea with the monks on board. Columban and his monks stayed at Nantes. He wrote to his monks at Luxeuil to obey the abbot he left in charge and if they felt pressured by Rome to adhere to their Easter calendar, they were to leave and join him rather than accept the Roman computation.

Columban, after sixty years of effort in vain to reform kings and nations who called themselves Catholic/Christian, he resolved to do mission work among the non-Christians. He led his monks across Lake Zurich to Tuggen. Columban burst the huge vat of beer, the offering to the God Woden. One of his companions set the temples in Tuggen on fire and threw their idols into the lake. Not an auspicious beginning. They fled for their lives. They regrouped at Bregentz. Again they threw idols into the lake but the native people were stubborn in their opposition to Columban’s preaching.

Columban went to see King Theodebert, who was still at war with Thierry. Columban recognized the overwhelming power of Thierry and advised Theodebert to abandon the war and take refuge in the monastery. Theodebert laughed at Columban. But, the battle of Tolbiac ended Theodebert’s reign. Thierry and Brunehild annexed the whole of Austrasia. This made it unsafe for Columban to stay in Bregentz so he crossed the Alps and sought refuge with the king of the Lombards.

In 612, Columban arrived in Milan. From there he wrote against the Arian heresy which the Lombards had accepted. Columban’s writing becomes effusive in his impetuousness, railing on behalf of many worthy causes and reverting to admonishing ecclesiastical leaders, including the Pope, to lead by example or loose their credibility.
Columban acknowledges Rome as the head of all Churches, with a caveat for Jerusalems prerogatives.
He tells Boniface that the Irish are orthodox, adhering to the apostolic tradition. “I speak to you not as a stranger, but as a disciple, as a friend, as a servant. I speak freely to our masters, to the pilots of the vessel of the Church, and I say to them, Watch! and despise not the humble advice of the stranger....Pardon me if swimming among the rocks, I have said words offensive to pious ears. The native liberty of my race has given me this boldness. With us it is not the person, it is the right, which prevails.” (Catholic online)
Columban founded a monastery in Bobbio, between Genoa and Milan. When Clothair II defeated Thierry and became king of Austrasia, Burgandy, and Neustria, he sent for Columban to return to Luxeuil. The old monk declined but sent the new king a long letter filled with advice.

Columban died on November 21, 615, at the age of 72. Many miracles occurred at his tomb.

[To whom do you listen for right and good? Especially when this story shows that even your grandmother could be the source and sustainer of an evil zeitgeist….]

I love you,
dad

[0135 thnxgiving]